In Brenham, support for Blue Bell is reflected in storefronts community-wide.

You could say that the mood is proudly optimistic with a swirl of concern in Brenham, where the town’s second-largest but most beloved employer is reeling in the wake of a widespread recall of its product line.

Blue Bell Creameries, a local institution whose ice cream is distributed in 23 states and internationally, issued its first recall in 108 years after its products were linked to Listeria cases in four states, including Texas.

“Everybody I’ve talked to is very optimistic,” said Charlie Pyle, owner of ice cream parlor and restaurant Must Be Heaven, in downtown Brenham, about 70 miles northwest of Houston. “They’re actually very proud of how Blue Bell is handling the total recall.”

Must Be Heaven, itself named for a one-time slogan of the ice-cream company, typically serves 16 Blue Bell flavors. Portraits of Pyle’s toddler kids, surrounded by Blue Bell cartons, decorate one wall with a declaration above: “We eat all we can. Mom and Dad sell the rest.”

Now, as the ice cream counter lays empty, other signs have appeared: “I get cranky without my Blue Bell,” one says. “Seven days without Blue Bell makes one weak,” says another.

Just down Alamo Street, Connie Wilder of The Pomegranate, a gift and coffee shop, is worried about the fate of Blue Bell’s employees.

“It’s a horrible thing,” she said. “My heart goes out to them…. Nobody likes to have their future up in the air.”

Blue Bell officials have pledged not to shed any workers, though experts expect the company’s recovery to run into eight figures.

Company supporters are being asked to wear Blue Bell shirts on Friday, while a community prayer vigil is planned for Saturday morning.

Updated at 11: 59 a.m.:The Sixth Floor Museum today announced the donation of nearly 2,000 archival photos from The Dallas Morning News depicting the events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The collection was officially handed over Friday, the eve of the 51st anniversary of the assassination, in a ceremonial donation. It includes 1,500 negatives and nearly 500 black and white print photographs, some never before made available to the public.

Nicola Longford, the museum’s executive director, said the museum’s first charge is to catalog and digitize the photos, which will eventually be available for public viewing online.

“This will forever be a significant resource for future generations, and we are very thankful,” Longford said.

She also praised the newspaper for its role in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination last year.

The donation comes two days after the museum announced the addition of two other Kennedy-related collections, one from former Dallas Times Herald photographer Eamon Kennedy and the other from Fort Worth Press photographer Gene Gordon.

Original post by Bruce Tomaso: The Dallas Morning News is donating to The Sixth Floor Museum 2,000 photographs from the newspaper’s coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Dallas and its aftermath.

The donation of the photo archive — about 1,500 negatives and nearly 500 black-and-white prints — will be announced later this morning in a ceremony at the museum.

Some of the photos have never been seen by the public.

The donation is being made “in the interest of preserving the history and legacy of President John F. Kennedy,” the museum said in a news release. The gift coincides with the 51st anniversary, on Saturday, of JFK’s assassination.

The museum, at 411 Elm Streeet, is in the former Texas School Book Depository, the building from which Kennedy was shot as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza.

Amber Vinson hugged Dr. Bruce Ribner after a news conference announcing her released from Emory.

Updated at 1 p.m.:

An upbeat Amber Vinson thanked God, her family and the health-care professionals who treated her as doctors announced the Dallas nurse’s discharge Tuesday from Emory University Hospital.

“I’m so grateful to be well,” said Vinson, beaming as she embraced the Emory officials and staff who stood behind her as she read her statement. Vinson did not take questions and asked that her family’s privacy be respected.

Vinson had been treated for the Ebola virus at the Atlanta hospital since Oct. 15. Her release was announced in a news conference conducted at noon Dallas time.

“We are pleased to announce that Amber Vinson is being discharged from Emory University Hospital,” said Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of the hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit. “After a rigorous course of treatment and thorough testing, we have determined that Ms. Vinson has recovered from the Ebola virus and can return to her family without any concern about transmitting the virus to any other person.”

Ribner praised the American health-care system for its response to the crisis and thanked the staff of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Vinson works, for their role in her initial care.

“We have been privileged to care for one of the members of their team,” he said. “We are pleased with Ms. Vinson’s recovery and grateful for our opportunity to apply our training toward meeting her medical needs.”

The Dallas hospital where Vinson worked with fellow nurse and Ebola patient Nina Pham also put out a statement praising their selflessness in treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S.

“Amber and her fellow caregiver, Nina Pham, are an inspiration for healthcare workers nationwide, and we at Texas Health Dallas could not be more proud of them,” the statement said.

Both Vinson and Pham recovered quickly from the disease, a welcome surprise that hospital officials could not quite explain. Ribner said their relatively young age – both nurses are in their 20s – may have played a role. “We know from a lot of data in Africa that younger patients tend to do better,” he said.

Vinson was also wearing protective equipment when she treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., “so it’s possible that the amount of virus she was exposed to was less,” he said.

Ribner recognized that public fears about the deadly virus continue.

“It’s critically important that we reassure the American people that we are taking measures to prevent future exposure,” he said. “But the thing we really have to keep in mind is that the only way we are truly going to keep citizens safe is to control the outbreak in Africa.”

Task Force member Daniel McVeigh shoots for a hole in one during the annual putting contest. (Cheryl Amerine)

The fourth annual State Fair of Texas Big Tex Golf Classic raised a record $60,000-plus for the fair’s Youth Livestock Auction participants and high school students around North Texas.

More than 100 players participated in Monday’s event, held at the Old American Golf Club in The Colony.

“We’ve exceeded expectations,” said chair Ryan Miller of the fair’s Chairman’s Task Force. “I cannot wait to see the faces of students whose futures will be changed by the funds raised today.”

The Chairman’s Task Force, the State Fair of Texas’ philanthropic arm, formed 46 years ago in hopes of improving the lives of high school students living near Fair Park. Its mission has since expanded to serve underprivileged students in North Texas. Proceeds from the annual golf tournament benefit the State Fair Scholarship Fund, open to high school seniors taking part in the fair’s livestock shows and to students from Lincoln, James Madison, Woodrow Wilson and North Dallas high schools as well as the Irma L. Ranger Young Women’s Leadership School.

Members of the Chairman's Task Force buckle down at the annual fundraiser.

PR account director Melissa Gullickson, left, was among hundreds of volunteers armed with brushes, rakes and hoes as part of Entrepreneurs for North Texas' annual Freedom Day efforts.

“Oh my god, I’m sweating,” said Samantha Colletti as she scraped the chipping paint off exterior doors Thursday morning in preparation for painting at Fisher House, a housing facility at the Veterans Administration North Texas Health Care System campus in South Dallas.

Her efforts were going to a good cause: Colletti, vice president of commercial banking for Silicon Valley Bank in Dallas, was one of hundreds of volunteers marking Freedom Day with upgrades and repairs to the veterans’ system’s Dallas campus and transitional housing units.

Entrepreneurs for North Texas annually commemorates Freedom Day, instituted in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with a large-scale volunteer project. This year, the group – a program of Communities Foundation of Texas – partnered with Rebuilding Together Greater Dallas to serve the area’s military veterans.

“Freedom Day is a wonderful opportunity to give back to the community and transform memories of tragedy into triumph,” said Pam Gerber, Entrepreneurs for North Texas’ executive director.

For companies like Silicon Valley Bank, it was a chance not only to mark the day and serve veterans but to promote camaraderie among employees.

“It’s nice team building for us,” said Brian Brown, managing director and senior partner of the bank’s Dallas office. “We’re a small, 10-person office, and we’re all going in different directions. This is a chance to get together and do something.”

Volunteers represented companies such as Camden Properties, Home Depot, marketing firm Marketwave and financial advice firm SFMG. After a brief opening ceremony at Victory Plaza, volunteers deployed for their assigned work sites. Most spent their time painting and landscaping around the VA’s North Texas campus.

Melissa Gullickson was one of a dozen volunteers from Addison-based Marketwave painting the wooden beams outside Fisher House’s rear entryway in an olive-green shade. “We’ve been doing this five years,” the account director said. “Our team’s planted trees at Fair Park; one year we decorated a teacher’s lounge. It’s a good opportunity to get out and help and give back to people.”

Meanwhile, Plano’s SFMG had closed down its office to contribute to the day’s effort. The company’s dozen employee volunteers were busy landscaping grounds and painting columns and railings outside Fisher House.

“We thought it was a good opportunity to remember 9/11 and salute the guys that made freedom happen,” said managing director Craig Greenway.

Since Freedom Day launched in 2002, more than 5,000 Entrepreneurs for North Texas volunteers have donated 25,000 hours of service to organizations such as DISD, Dallas Fire-Rescue, Interfaith Housing Coalition, Junior Achievement and the African-American Museum at Fair Park.

“There’s no better way to honor the lives lost and changed on Sept. 11 than by making a positive impact on the lives of people in our community,” said Communities Foundation of Texas CEO Brent Christopher.

Researcher Reed Jost of Dallas' Retina Foundation of the Southwest tests the Pediatric Vision Scanner on a young patient.

A new technology could radically improve childhood detection of potentially serious vision problems, according to a study conducted by Dallas’ own Retina Foundation of the Southwest.

The results, published in the latest issue of JAMA Ophthalmology, establish the Pediatric Vision Scanner, which uses a technique called retinal birefringence scanning, as the preferred approach to testing preschool children for eye issues.

According to Jean Buys, the foundation’s executive director, if potential problems can be identified when a child is still young, “it saves their vision. If you don’t fix that before the age of 4, they can have permanent issues.”

Hundreds of thousands of children every year permanently lose sight due to lack of detection, the foundation says.

Foundation researchers tested 300 children for amblyopia, known as “lazy eye,” and strabismus, or misaligned eyes, together the leading causes of preventable vision loss. The conditions affect more than 8,000 preschool kids in Dallas County.

They found that the scanner developed by REBIScan, a medical device and data analytics company based in Cambridge, Mass., outperformed existing technology.

An accompanying editorial in the magazine written by Jonathan Holmes, an ophthalmology professor at the Mayo Clinic, suggested the technology be incorporated into routine clinical eye-care assessment.

REBIScan hopes to begin selling the devices next year.

The scanner allows doctors to measure the response from a child’s eye when looking at a projected image of a red smiley face. Eye abnormalities show up as weaker wavelengths.

With early detection, conditions can be treated with glasses or an eye patch.

“This is going to be helpful for people all over the country,” Buys said. “The hope is to have this in every pediatrician’s office.

“Kids go undetected all the time,” she said. “The key, as always, is catching everything early.”

A Seattle ex-pat's two favorite Top Pot doughnuts: Blueberry cake and maple bar.

Those of us who make a beeline for Seattle’s Top Pot Doughnuts whenever we head back to the Emerald City now don’t have to go so far to satisfy those cravings: On Thursday, Top Pot opened in Dallas, on Hillcrest Road just north of Northwest Highway, where Elevation Burger used to be. It’s the chain’s first location outside Washington State.

For a Seattle ex-pat like me, this is kind of a big deal.

The new Dallas location is on Hillcrest Road, just north of Northwest Highway.

Before I joined the Morning News, I lived in Seattle, which doesn’t have nearly the doughnut-shop-per-capita ratio that Dallas does. Initially I lived in the city’s centrally located Capitol Hill neighborhood before buying a condo farther north — soon after Top Pot had opened its first location four blocks from where I had lived. In the months that passed I came to wonder if home ownership was really a better trade-off than living down the street from what would quickly become an obsession: A blur of blueberry cake doughnuts (still my favorite) and maple bars and the chocolate-frosting-topped chocolate cake doughnuts known as Double Troubles. Before long, though, the doughnut shop’s success prompted the opening of branches all around town, all echoing the original’s blond wood decor, natural light and library feel. (Eventually, Top Pot would become the official doughnut of the Seattle Seahawks’ stadium.)

The cafe's signature library-like interior.

That atmosphere is what you’ll find in Top Pot’s new Dallas location, along with a variety of doughnuts ready for take-out in signature red and blue boxes. What I’ve always personally appreciated about Top Pot is its simplicity, focused more on the mostly classic doughnuts themselves than on any gimmicky toppings, with the cake options substantial and well-textured, and the glazed and others airy and fluffy but, in Seinfeld-ian lingo, not prone to shrinkage. On my initial foray there with a friend, I happened to run into Morning News restaurant critic Leslie Brenner, who had rounded up a formidable selection of samples in addition to – as she noted – a cup of the cafe’s solid coffee.

Meanwhile, my pal Kevin and I had scored four doughnuts of our own. While you might not wake up craving these doughnuts, it’s worth mentioning that some do — including, notoriously, former Seahawks receiver Golden Tate. As for me — frankly, I’m not sure I’m not still dreaming. Pinch me.

After 76 years, the Mecca may be dishing up its last chicken-fried steak.

Better make a run for that last cinnamon roll: Two years after leaving its decades-old Harry Hines location in Northwest Dallas, the Mecca restaurant — “waking up Dallas since 1938″ — is shutting its doors again.

Unlike last time, when it temporarily closed up shop to relocate to Skillman and Live Oak in Lakewood, the Mecca — as reported Thursday by culturemap Dallas, has no definite place to land, though owner Mike Sealy hopes to find a new location nearby. For now, though, you’ve got until 5 pm Sunday to enjoy one last stack of fluffy pancakes or a block of homey meatloaf.

In November, we brought you the tale of Berneta Peeples, the longtime reporter for the Belton Journal who was still reporting for duty at the age of 96.

On Thursday, Peeples was honored with the state’s Yellow Rose of Texas award, which recognizes women who’ve demonstrated outstanding volunteer and community service. State Sen. Troy Fraser presented Peeples with the award, calling her “a true legend in Texas journalism.”

Peeples started at the paper at the age of 17 and has worked there for more than 60 years despite leaving the Journal several times. She now uses a walker and was sidelined for a month last year after a fall. But it’s her new computer, she says, that has her threatening to retire — for real this time. “It’s driving me crazy,” she said.

Fraser’s statement noted, as the story pointed out, that Peeples might be the only stilll-working journalist to have ever interviewed a Civil War veteran. Her institutional knowledge of the town, an hour north of Austin, has made her a local icon.

Marty Hayes (at lower right) on her 75th birthday, with former student Carolyn James and her husband Daryl.

In September, we brought you the story of Marty Hayes, the onetime Kimball High choir director whose former student, Carolyn James, ultimately became her caretaker as Hayes dealt with the worsening effects of Lewy body dementia.

Thirty-five years after she graduated from Kimball in 1969, James had wanted to get back in touch with Hayes to thank her for inspiring her own education career (James is a guidance counselor at Highland Park High) and the two formed a friendship. As the effects of Hayes’ disease became more acute, James and husband Daryl took the former teacher into their Frisco home.

The disease is sort of a mix of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. When it became clear that Hayes would eventually need more care than the couple is able to provide, James created a fund called “We Are Her Kids” in hopes that Hayes’ former students and others would help.

Despite the national attention, which did not note the fund, Hayes’ needs remain as her memory and physical condition deteriorate. “The confusion becomes very frustrating to her,” James says. “She knows she is missing the thread that links life together and she does not know how to mend it.”

James estimates the care Hayes eventually requires will exceed her insurance coverage by about $24,000 a year. In the meantime, she and Daryl struggle to assist Hayes while juggling the demands of their own livelihoods. “We’re doing the best we can,” Carolyn says.

If you’d like to help, donations to the “We Are Her Kids” fund can be addressed to the attention of Kim Welch at the Credit Union of Texas, 7801 Coit Road, Plano, TX 75024. Checks should be made out to Martha Hayes with “We Are Her Kids” written on the lower left line of the check.